Fall
by Joltz
Summary: Draco/Pansy, Draco/Harry, Pansy/Hermione. Love kills. This is what it's like when there is no tomorrow.


(A/N: First fic in a long time. Not spell checked 'cuz my version of Word is so old it doesn't have a spellchecker. R for talk about sex, bad words, violence. Actually, it's a high PG-13, but what the hell. Slashy, obviously. You have been warned.)  
  
Title: Fall  
Summary: Draco/Pansy, Draco/Harry, Pansy/Hermione. Love kills. This is what it's like when there is no tomorrow.  
  
  
  
"Wouldn't it have been funny if Harry Potter would've died today?"  
  
Draco shifted uncomfortably and gritted his teeth. "No, Pansy, it wouldn't have."  
  
"Why not? The almighty Harry Potter, brought down not by the near-omnipotent Dark Lord but by a bludger to the chest and a high altitude fall. That's humor." She was smiling coyly, but it didn't reach her eyes. It was obvious that she didn't find it as funny as she attested.  
  
"No, that would be ironic. And I am not a fan of irony."   
  
They were both soaked through, the rain that had lashed down the better part of the day drenching the Gryffindor/Slytherin quidditch match. Andrew Wick, and over-exeuberent 5th year chaser for Slytherin had managed to get in a brawl with a few (larger) Gryffindor boys and snap his brestbone, which meant Pansy would be playing as a substitute. It was supposedly a benifit for Gryffindor to have a less experienced chaser on the opposing team, but in actuality the only reason Pansy herself wasn't on the team is because she tried out during the regeime of Flint, who happened to be a sexist bastard. He couldn't ignore her playing ability, though, and instead of caving to the weaker sex, he put her on the reserve team where she could be neither seen or taken seriously. Today, however, she was both. Pansy was nothing if not malicious, both on the ground and in the air, and it showed. Indeed, Slytherin was far ahead with scoring, and they doubtless would've won had Harry Potter not taken a stray bludger directly to the chest and been virtually launched off his broom to plummet to the ground below.  
  
And had Draco not jetted after and caught him.  
  
It was quite a sight, seeing the mortal enemys suspended in mid-air together, the entirety of both teams literally stopped around them. It seemed the whole stadium froze in a collective, shock-induced quiet. The question, however, was loud and as clear as day: Why?  
  
Draco did not want to answer. But, he sighed, Pansy would want answers. Pansy would demand answers.  
  
"How could you be so stupid?" She asked in a low, silky voice she could only have picked up from years of close quarters with Snape.   
  
"I didn't want him to die for such a stupid reason. When he dies, I want it to be at my hands." He tried the excuse he was going to give everyone else. He was rewarded with a snort for his efforts. Turning around, he was confronted with the sight of a stripping Pansy, the water in the bath already drawn. Sniffing the air, he scowled. The purple bubbles that smelled like lavender, the ones she favored. The were going to smell the same all night. Unfortunately, the price of that little stunt made for a horribly uncomfortable locker room, so the Prefect's Bath was really the only hexless place at the moment. He was snapped out of his musings by Pansy's slow drawl.  
  
"Like what you see?"  
  
He snorted. They both knew that he didn't.  
  
"Anyway, you'll get your chance. If you tell people that, that that's the reason you saved Harry Potter's life, your father and the dark lord will make sure that you get to do it yourself. Your lies are crystalline, Draco, and you'll be punished dearly for them." She slid into the water, sighing with bliss as the warmth engulfed her, but her eyes never left Draco.  
  
They were both silent for a moment, simply staring at eachother, when Pansy uttered the unthinkable, the question that they both hated, that shattered every illusion they could give themselves.   
  
"What shall we name our children?" She was laying it on thick. Draco spun, the rage washing over his face like a tsunami.  
  
"Shut up Shut up SHUT UP!" Draco screamed. "Shut up, just shut up!" He slouched against the sink, pressing his forehead against the mirror. "I hate you," He wispered brokenly. "God, I hate you so much."  
  
She smiled grimly. "Welcome to the real world, Draco. You see this?" She held up her forearm, the black of the Dark Mark nearly glinting against her pale skin. "Well, you have one too. And your destiny is sealed, Malfoy, no matter how much you love him."  
  
They were both silent. There, it was in the open. What they both knew, but they never said.   
  
"You did yourself in, Malfoy." Any illusion of the coy, smug Pansy was gone. Now she was just cold, matter-of-fact. "You should've let him fall."  
  
Draco snorted. "Let him fall, huh? Let him fall." He smashed his fist into the wall, the crack of bone resonating around the room. "How could I do that? Pansy, you tell me, how do I let the only person I ever..." He trailed off. "How do I let him fall?"  
  
"Dumbledore would've caught him. He's done it before, you know. Dumbledore-"  
  
"Dumbledore," Draco inturrupted, "Resents Harry almost as much as Harry resentes him. As soon as Harry grew up enough to realize that Dumbledore was as manipulative as any Slytherin and was using him, he stopped being a novelty and started being a force that was hard to control. Not only that, but Harry resents Dumbledore for resenting his resent."  
  
"Peter Piper picked a peck of pickeled peppers."  
  
"Shut up. You know what I mean."  
  
"I'm thinking what you mean is that Dumbledore consideres Harry more of a threat than an asset nowdays, and would've 'been too slow' to prevent Harry's accident."  
  
"Exactly."  
  
"You're full of shit."  
  
Draco snorted. "Okay, if I didn't save him, who would've? And even if someone would've, it was just instinctive."  
  
"My arse. You're a Slytherin, and your telling me that your survival instincts didn't scream at you when you chased after him? Look out for number one, that's the instinct you should've listened to. You ignored that, and now you face serious consequences. You should've let him fall."  
  
"Yeah, yeah, let him fall." He was sick with fear for himself and pain in his hand, and he was back to screaming again and aiming to hurt. "The only reason you say that, the only reason, is that it wasn't Hermione on that broom!"   
  
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If Pansy wanted to play that game, then he could too.  
  
He watched as her face grew distant, far away, her eyes unfocused. She always had a vivid imagination, and she was no doubt replaying some dark and forbidden memory in her head. He was almost ready to apologise, when she spoke.  
  
"She's not innocent, you know. I don't see why people think that she is. Innocence doesn't stick around when you have knowledge and curiousity out the arse. When..." She trailed off, her voice cracking before settling into it's usual cold, steady tone. "When we first...fucked," She laughed bitterly. "Because that's all it can be with us, right? Fucking." She shook her head. "She said she was a virgin, but she knew things, could do things..." She trailed off again momentairly, for which Draco was thankful. "I thought she was lying to me. That is, until she took me to the restricted section one night and showed me some of those books she had her nose buried in from time to time." She laughed. "Innocence? Ye gods, that girl has a mind that can't even qualify."   
  
"Granger's a hussy. Who would've ever guessed?" Draco snorted with laughter.  
  
"No one, and that's why it was so perfect. So beautiful... Her corruption put mine into perspective. She made me real, made everything seem like it was alright." She stood up and pulled herself out of the bath, she soap and water dripping off her, her arms crossing over her chest. She just stood there, naked and vunerable almost, staring into Draco's eyes. "I would've let her fall."  
  
Draco was taken aback. "What?" But she continued on, as if in some kind of trance.   
  
"I would've let her fall. I would've crowded around, like everyone else. I would've laughed, just like all the other Slytherins, and I would haul myself into a shower and weep, where the tears are the same thing as the spray and you can't tell one from the other, and you know what?" She walked up and stood uncomfortably close to Draco, chest to chest, eye to eye. "I would be crying for myself."  
  
Draco shifted and broke eye contact first. "I don't understand."   
  
She shrugged delicately. "I didn't think you would." She walked over to one of the closets, pulling out a green robe with silver trim and shrugging it over her shoulders without bothering to towel off. "Isn't is funny how different houses can't even share bathclothes?" She laughed, "How deep our rivalries run!"  
  
He was not to be deterred. "What do you mean, Pansy." It was more of a demand than a question.  
  
"Oh, Draco, simple little Draco." She purred, before laughing again. "She is my life, my sanity, my anchor. And as long as she lives, she will be, always. She will also be the death of me. Like Harry will be for you, my darling dragon-boy. And any oppourtunity to break away from that, to become a cold, callous killer like any good Slytherin," Her voice was dripping with mocking amusement. "Would be so welcome."  
  
"You're mad." Was all he could bluster.  
  
"So are you." She smiled at him. "The water's all yours." And then it seemd like a haze was being lifted, and Draco realized all at once that he was still standing around in raindrenched, sopping wet clothing with a throbbing hand, shaking with the cold.  
  
"You're lips are blue, bet your dick is too." Pansy chanted in a sing-song voice as she passed by him to leave, and Draco couldn't help but laugh. It was amazing how quickly Pansy could go from being insightful to childish. Right now, Draco welcomed the change. Thinking a moment, he called out to her as she opened the portrait.  
  
"Thomas."  
  
"What?"  
  
"What we should name our firstborn. After our Dark Lord." He explained in a monotone.  
  
He expected her to quip about what a horrid name that would be if their firstborn was a daughter, but in stead she laughed as though it was the funniest thing int the world. "Oh, Draco!"  
  
"What?" He glanced up at her, catching her twisted grin and her serious eyes. Pansy Parkinson in a nutshell.  
  
She clicked her tounge against the roof of her mouth, and smiled grimly. "After today? You aren't going to live that long."  
  
And then she was gone. And he knew that she was right.  
  
"So much for Slytherin survival instincts," He murmered, before bursting into a hysterical bout of laughter, leaping into the warm bath with his clothes still on. "I love him, I love him, God help me, I love him!"  
  
He laughed until he cried.  
  
He was crying for himself. 


End file.
